Friday, March 30, 2012

Puff pastry and bananas were on sale at the grocery store, so this must be the universe aligning perfectly to convince me that making black bean and banana empañadas is the best idea ever. And it was. I mean, I can't say that they are the prettiest empañadas, but at least they tasted great! Seeing as this was my first time making them, I'll cut myself some slack and focus on the taste rather than presentation at the moment. I'm glad that my coworker introduced me to them when she made them for Wednesday's international pot luck lunch at the office.

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Because of an office event tomorrow, I decided to move my work-from-home day to today which worked out really nicely. I was able to send off a poster presentation for review, cook up a batch of dal nirvana (I've lost count how many times I've made this dish over the past month. It's so cheap and good.), do a load of laundry and a load of dishes.

Mom called me earlier tonight. It's nice to know that she isn't too busy having fun that she forgets to touch base.

Card: Here's my take on CPS #258. I picked out some American Crafts Dear Lizzy Enchanted paper and noticed that the solid B side was a lavender color. Oh, perfect. I recently got some Basic Grey Kioshi woolies that have lavender in them. They would totally match! And I'd actually use the crafty supplies that I bought. What a concept, right?

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Mmm, cake: My tres leches cake was a success! By the time I walked through the front door, I had an empty container. I gave the last short row to one of my neighbors. Awesome. The second picture is of my dinner tonight. Mmm...dumplings. Mom needs to come back from Taiwan so that we can make more. My freezer supply is empty!

Anyway, back to the cake. I shleped the whipped cream carton to the office with a bowl and mixer so that I could make the whipped topping fresh, and oh, man, that was good. In case you want to make the cake yourself, you can find the recipe here on the Pioneer Woman website. One of my co-workers is gluten-free, but she said that she HAD to have a piece of the cake. I took it as a compliment, but felt sad that she'll probably not be feeling so great afterwards.

I was a little worried when I saw that while there were many people saying they could come to the pot luck, not many people signed up to bring food when I checked the RSVP site. Thankfully, if there's one thing that my office knows how to do, it's eat. There was an abundance and variety of food...some homemade and some store bought. Other food items at today's potluck included kugel, some sort of Liberian spinach dish, several different rice dishes, Indian chick peas, mac and cheese, bean and banana empenadas, an Indian donut hole dish, etc.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

So..the office is having an international pot luck tomorrow. Plan A was to get my mom to make fried rice, but seeing as she's out of the country, I had to go with Plan B: tres leches. I followed The Pioneer Woman's recipe (Recipe #5 of 2012). Sure, there are healthier versions of this dessert, but hey, go hard or go home, right? I couldn't get the stiff egg white peaks, but after standing with a hand mixer for what seemed like forever, I just gave up and continued to the other steps of the recipe. The cake still turned out ok. I cut off a sliver since it's going to be covered with fresh whipped topping at the office tomorrow. I think the cake itself is kinda dry, but it's not really intended to be eaten on its own. I can't wait to dig in to the finished dessert; a picture will follow tomorrow.

I went to the grocery store after going to spin class to get some of the ingredients. I wandered the baking aisle, hoping to find the condensed milk and evaporated milk because that's where they are at the same grocery store near my house. After pacing the aisle for a while ,one of the stockers stopped me. "Why don't you just ask for help in what you're looking for or do you just like the exercise?" Oh, heh. I asked him where I could find the stuff and sure enough, he directed me to the right aisle. Imagine that. :)

Monday, March 26, 2012

At the office: This week is employee appreciation week, and it started with free breakfast (fruit, yogurt, eggs, croissants, etc.). This was really nice because I've been missing the staff breakfasts lately. I started working from home on Fridays during the summer and the free staff breakfasts are on the last Friday of the month. I got lucky this month.

Compliments: My new haircut and dress got some compliments today. It was definitely a good self esteem day. :)

Surprise snail mail: My former officemate Jennifer (who is currently working from home, on bed rest, pregnant with twin girls) snail mailed me an article that she tore out of a magazine. It was about different fun manicures. I think it's funny that she thought of me when she saw it.

Card: I feel like I've been doing lots of cards with this sort of layout lately, but that's okay because I know it works and the cards that I've done turned out great! Here's my take on Fall-To Layout #183.

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Shopping + Buyer's Remorse: Today's shopping excursion after my 1-hour spin class this morning resulted in both good and bad things. Let's start with the bad stuff first. I have been meaning to replace the reed diffuser in my living room, and I found one at HomeGoods. I brought it home and set it up. Within a few minutes, I thought I was going to gag. The fragrance was so strong, and while I liked it at the store, I definitely didn't like it when it was in my house. I tossed that s*** out. There goes $8 down the drain. Sigh.

Oh, well. Anyway, let's move on to the good stuff. I found a BUNCH of Basic Grey goodies at Tuesday morning (see video below) and comfy dresses on sale at Target. I can't wait to wear them this week! I also got HP printer ink, peanut butter, and bras on sale at Target too, but that's not as exciting as the dresses.

Tuesday Morning Haul: Here are the goodies that I bought yesterday and today at two different Tuesday Mornings.

Saturday, March 24, 2012

Estate sale: Now that the warmer weather is setting in, I feel like there are more yard/rummage/estate sales to go to during the weekends. "Whoo hoo," says this deal-finding gal. Today, I went to 1 rummage sale that was a total bomb and I didn't get anything there, but then afterwards I went to an estate sale where I found a hammer and 2 pairs of scissors for a total of $4. One of the scissors is for the kitchen and the other (retail price $14.69) is for crafting, especially with paper piecing. I don't have any hand tools at home, and I don't feel like paying full price for them. Every time I wanted to hang something at the house, I had to borrow my mom's hammer, but now I don't need to do that. Screwdrivers and a wrench are next on the list.

Family/movie: I went over to my parents' house tonight for dinner to celebrate my dad's birthday. We got Italian food from That's Amore and my cousin made custard for dessert. I'm super stuffed. Once the conversation ventured to Taiwanese politics, I promptly made my way downstairs to watch the other Redbox movie that I got yesterday- Friends with Benefits. It was cute, but I've seen better romantic comedies. While I've been known to say a few curse words or so, I felt like they were sprinkled all over the movie way too much. Do people really talk like that??

Cards: I made two cards today...one was requested by Mom, who wanted to give a "congratulations on your new house" card to her sister and then a birthday card for Dad (I used Taylored Expressions Sketch #155 as inspiration).

Friday, March 23, 2012

Ahhh...taking a vacation day was the best. idea. ever. And it was rather productive since I was out and about, rather than sitting on my couch all day.

It started with doing a load of laundry, followed by a haircut that I was really pleased with. My last haircut was in September, and because my hair is so thick, having it grow out makes it rather heavy. The hair stylist gave me my bangs back as well as trimmed off some from the bottom so I'm feeling rather lighter now!

After my visit to the salon, I went to see Hunger Games at the theater near my office and I thought it was really well done. I started tearing up when Rue died. I don't know if it's a movie that'd I'd buy on DVD, but I thought the film did the book justice.

I went to the grocery store to pick up some milk and other necessary items (read: Ben and Jerry's Frozen Yogurt) and rented 2 movies from the Redbox kiosk (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Friends with Benefits). I watched The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo tonight, and I don't know what I found more disturbing- the violence towards humans or the animal cruelty. I'm not sure I want to read the book now. Maybe I should have started with the book so I would have known what to expect in the movie. Even with all that said, I thought it was a good movie, but not really one I'd buy or want to see again, at least not for a while. I'm thinking that FWB will be much more lighthearted!

As for RJ, it's a good thing that I don't have company over very often because I'm sure they'd find the cat hair on the dining table very unattractive. As if he doesn't have full reign over this house already...

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

This week's One-Layer Wednesday (#84) focused on pinks and orange. I decided to dig out some stamps that I hadn't used yet. I thought this large Thankful stamp would work well as the focal point of the card. The first version of this card had flowers around the sentiment, but then I couldn't position them right. I went in a totally different direction with the second and final card by using the border image and stamped it repeatedly with different shades of pinks and orange.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Weather: Despite today being the first day of spring and you'd expect the sun shining and flowers blooming, the day started out with a massive thunderstorm. Like huge. Like you want to hide under the covers until it's over. Fortunately, it stopped before I had to get to work.

Card: Mom's birthday is tomorrow, so tonight's assignment was to make a card for her. I decided to visit the Taylored Expressions website and try out TE Sketch Challenge #154. I knew that I wanted to have flowers be the focus of the card because of my mom's green thumb. I used my Aqua Painter to color in the image and give it a soft feel. I used the Wild Honey ink to paint the stamen, but then I put Liquid Pearl on top of it to give it some visual interest.

Monday, March 19, 2012

Growing up, I was never the kid that had the hippest, newest stuff. My dad, being the financially conservative person that he is, didn't really think that was a practical use of money.

Flashforward ~20 years.

My dad is now the owner of the new iPad 3. I just about fell out of my chair when he told me that he pre-ordered one for himself. It was kind of a role reversal because I then launched into a lecture of "Why do you need it? What will you use it for? The iPad is expensive! You don't NEED one!" Oh well, he already bought it and it's not my money, so I'll eventually just have to let it go.

I called the house today to ask Mom a question. Dad answers the phone. "The UPS man delivered my iPad today." Wow, that was quick. I went over to the house today after spin class and found iPad still sitting in its box. WTH?!!!! I gave Dad a hard time about that. "You spent all this money on this new toy and you haven't even opened the box?!" "Well, there's more important things to do right now," he replies. He's saying this as he's reading an article online, when last week he said that the advantage of an iPad is that you can access the Internet anywhere in the house. I decided to go upstairs and chat with Mom before I tore my hair out talking to Dad. Towards the end of my visit, I finally gave in. "Dad, if you're not going to open the box, I will." "Ok." I think he was secretly intimidated by it and was waiting for me to volunteer to help him set it up.

Now I'm wondering if it was a mistake to show Mom and Dad how to Facetime.

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Half Marathon Recap:I forgot to mention yesterday that when I was at the half marathon, there was a funny guy at the Mile 2 marker that I was standing at. He had a megaphone and was cheering on the runners. "It's a great day for a marathon. Way to go runners! Keep it up! Don't forget to drink that water. There are two things that you need when you're running a marathon: water and Jesus! Amen!" He kept repeating this and usually got a few chuckles from the athletes.

Nails: It's been quite a while since I've done any nail stamping, so I decided to do some tonight. The butterfly image was appealing to me because it reminded me of spring. I think you'd have to be kinda close to realize they were butterflies. From far away, I think most people would wonder what was up with my banged up manicure. Base coat: Sally Hansen's Complete Salon Manicure in Yellow Kitty. (2 coats). Pink: Cover Girl 3-in-1 056 Fabulous Fuchsia. Bundle Monster plate #205.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Meg's Half Marathon: Today, I went with Meg to cheer her on in the Rock 'n Roll Half Marathon (she did the full marathon 2 years ago). The Happy Birthday balloon that we used last week as a good marker for the cheer squad was still going strong, so I brought that around with me. Many people along the way kept saying happy birthday that I just said thank you instead of trying to correct them.

It was pretty amazing how many runners were at this event today. Just getting off the Metro and toward the Stadium was a hassle. It was a sea of people. There was one scary moment where a guy fell on the escalator and Meg almost got trampled, but fortunately, this guy was able to regain his balance with the help of a friend. Yikes.

I parked myself at Mile 2 and fortunately, there were some other people there too. One lady was watching for her friends so that she could jump in and run with them. This was going to be difficult since she said that her friends were running with a green shirt and black capri running tights, a very common outfit for the women considering today was St. Patrick's Day. I see the 2:00 pace team run by but no Meg. I was starting to get worried, so I decided to check my phone and her parents forwarded me the texts they were getting with Meg's progress. She had already passed the 5K mark so I missed her. Right before I decided to move to my next spot, one of my high school friends runs by and yells "TINA! Why aren't you runningggg?!" Ha ha. Uhhh, because running 13.1 miles sounds torturous to me?

I saw Meg again between miles 10 and 11 and then I made my way back to the Stadium. I couldn't make it in time to see her cross the finish line, but I think Meg understood since the Metro was slow and there was a crowd to wade through. I gave her a big hug at the end and then made my way back home...where I then passed out for the afternoon. Man, being a cheer squad party of 1 is tough...but of course, not as tough as running a half marathon.

Card: Here's my take on Fall-To Layout #182. My goal was to make a masculine birthday card. I think it turned out to be more gender neutral, but at least it's not overtly feminine as my cards usually turn out to be.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

RJ: RJ was doing his sea otter impression again this afternoon. While I appreciate his willingness to cuddle with me while I'm watching TV, those days are going to be limited as the days are getting warmer. It was probably closer to 80 today, and it's only March!

Food: Have you tried the new birthday cake Oreos? They are in celebration of the 100th birthday of Oreos. The bag died a very quick death in this house.

Card: I'm continuing my use of the layered felt embellishments from Pebbles. I first cut out the floral pattered paper and then dug through my packages of Pebbles embellishments to find a color that matched. The cupcake one was close enough.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Family: After spin class last night, I went to my uncle/aunt's house. It was really a dinner for the adults, but I crashed it anyway. There were pickled cucumbers and udon with soup, my favorites. I dug in...until I realized that everyone at the table was watching me. Uhhh. Then my uncle spoke up to say that seeing me eat with such enthusiasm made him really happy. Ha ha.At the office: My boss was in town for about 1.5 days, but she was running around talking to so many people that I probably talked to less than when she's in her home office. She's taking a cruise at the end of the month, so I'm sure she's trying to get as much stuff done before then as she can.

We're supposed to be doing an international pot luck at the end of the month. I wanted Mom to make her fried rice. "Tina, I'm not going to be in town, remember?" Oh. Right. Great. I need to move onto Plan B. What's Plan B, you ask? Yeah, I dunno either. I'll think of something eventually.

Food: On another note, after 4 visits to FrozenYo, I used up the $10 gift card that the office gave me. Frozen yogurt consumption has gone down, as you can imagine.

Card: Anyway, onward to card making. Here's my take on CPS #256. I started out with the pink floral patterned paper, thinking that this card was going to be in a landscape orientation. I was feeling kinda stuck on the card layout until I remembered that I hadn't attempted this week's CPS. That helped a lot. I went through my scrap folder and found the blue and purple pieces. I chose a butterfly stamp from a set that I hadn't used in a while and did some tone-on-tone stamping. I attached the purple piece and then die cut the white circle. Just having it plain white would be really boring so that's why I ran it through my Cuttlebug with an embossing folder. I stamped the sentiment as a final touch. Ta da!

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Meg's birthday: Last night, Robyn and I went to hang out at Meg's place...a) to celebrate her birthday and b) so that we could leave together to go to the St. Patrick's Day 8K this morning. We went to a grill place for dinner. I got a chicken wrap, which wasn't really all that exciting. The more exciting part for me were the tater tots that came on the side. They bring back memories from my elementary school cafeteria days.

Robyn and I put on Thor (I gave Meg the DVD as a birthday present), as Meg prepped her race wear: a sash that alluded to her birthday and a shirt that she decorated with a Sharpie. Robyn bought a birthday balloon which served 2 purposes- Meg's birthday present and a good marker for us running the race to see Robyn cheering.

The Race: The race was fun. I love seeing all the decorations and costumes that people put on. I wasn't able to beat my time from last year, but I hadn't really been training outside too much so I didn't really have high expectations. I clocked in at 54:20. Last year's time was 52:43. After the race, Robyn and I went with Meg and some of her running friends to a nearby place for brunch. The place looked really nice and I thought we were a little underdressed with our running tights and t-shirts. When we got inside, it turns out many runners from the race were there to eat too. For brunch, I decided on a buttermilk biscuit with pear butter and a serving of fresh fruit.

RJ: UGH, dumb cat. I woke up from my nap this afternoon after I got back from Meg's house and RJ was nowhere in sight. I got out his food from the fridge and still nothing. I put in a load of laundry. Still nothing. I started to get worried. Did he some how get out of the house? No, hah, that's stupid. I went back upstairs, and I heard him stuck between the wall and the washer. I guess he was scared of the running noisy washer and didn't want to jump up. I was going to give him a scolding, but his pathetic meow saved him from that. He was rather dusty, yuck.

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Card: I actually tried Fall-To Layout #181 last night, but I didn't like the card, so I moved onto another card. I decided to revisit the card sketch today and I'm liking this card a lot more, and it's actually totally different from the one that I tried last night. If at first you don't succeed...

Friday, March 9, 2012

At the office: Today was the first Friday that I've been at the office in a long time. I decided to switch my teleworking day for this past Monday because I was asked to sit on an interview. All I have to say is that I'm so glad that I'm not in the hot seat. I suppose you could argue that the interviewer seat is equally as hard because you have to choose one candidate out of many, but I think that pressure is really on the department that's hiring, which I'm not really a part of. I was just there to offer another opinion.

Card: Here's my card for today. I used many of the American Crafts products that I bought a few weeks ago. I'm not one to use tags, but I think the greyish one that I used in this card is a good compliment to the yellow background.

Thursday, March 8, 2012

I used two more of the Stampin' Up stamps that I bought last weekend. I had some pink cardstock leftover from another card that I made so I started there first by die cutting a label from it. Then I stamped the music score stamp on a white piece of cardstock and die cut that with a label one smaller than the one I used to cut the pink one. I stamped the flower and grass images. Then came the tough part of tying the baker's twine in a bow. Once that was done, I assembled the card and added the sentiment at the bottom. Ta da!Card Specs:Ink: Colorbox chalk ink in Charcoal, Warm Green, Warm Red. Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Antique Linen.Paper: ChatterboxStamp: Stampin' Up- Garden Silhouettes (floral, sentiment), K.I. Memories- Garden (grass), Stampendous (music score)Die: Spellbinders Nestabilities Labels 4Stickers: Cosmo Cricket Tiny TypePunch: We R Memory Keepers Corner Chomper, EK Success Postage Stamp border punchOther: Recollections Pearls, We R Memory Keepers Sew Easy Fancy Floss in Referee

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Here's another card in my effort to use the new supplies that I acquired recently. I took a piece of white cardstock and stamped the music score first with Antique Linen. Then I stamped the Flower Bird Garden image with Versamark right on top of the music score image, sprinkled clear embossing powder on top, and then used a heat gun to melt the clear embossing powder. Now, it's time to have some fun with using Distress Inks as water colors. I stamped the ink pad on a large clear block and used my Aqua Painter to color in the image. I kept a paper towel near by to soak up any ink that got on the clear embossed part. Ta da!

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Hit a few bumps at the office today, but ending the day with this furbaby made things all better.Plus, Julie came home for the day and she came over to make peanut butter cookies to mail to a friend. There are no longer any cookie making supplies at my parents' house after I moved out because I brought them all with me. Ha ha.

Monday, March 5, 2012

Community Service: Today, I was invited by my friend Jessie to speak to her 8th grade girls after school program about college and careers. I was very pleasantly surprised how this event turned out. I was greeted at the door by one of the girls and shown which room to be in. The room erupted into, "HI, MISS TINA!" Uh, hi. Wait, how do you know what my name is? Jessie must have caught my confused expression and held up a pack of bios with pictures. Ah, I see.

We broke up into 4 groups with 2 "adults" in each group. The girls rotated every 10 minutes or so. The girls were really sweet and asked thoughtful questions like "How does college help you with your time management and writing skills?" and "Did your friends get in the way of college?"

At the end, each of the "adults" was instructed to give a piece of advice. I had to think of something really quick. No one wants to be the last one with nothing creative to say. I decided to paraphrase this quote: "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”― Maya Angelou

Card: I'm slowly starting to use the new crafty items that I bought a few weeks ago (yeah, what a concept, right?). To pass the time last night, I made a quick card using my new Martha Stewart fish punch to create this card. I used my printer to create the sentiment, and it somehow printed a little higher than I would have liked, but instead of recycling the card base, I just put a border on the bottom that has a wave-feel to it.

I looked up the punch online, and regular price, it's $16 on Amazon (?!). I got it for $3 at Marshalls. Mwah ha ha ha.

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Etsy: Finally, after almost a month without sales, I got a sale today...an origami fox birthday card to some one in the UK.

Two-a-day: I went to an hour spin class this morning and decided to get another workout in this afternoon for a 3 mile run. In between workouts, I had gone to my parents' house to figure out what to do with some of my old stuff (throw away, donate or keep) and ended up also consuming a bunch of ice cream there. I guess the afternoon run balances everything out.

Card: Here's my take on CPS #255. I stamped the floral image once for a full red effect and then immediately stamped it again for the faded image.

Saturday, March 3, 2012

Julie's birthday card: I forgot to take a picture of the birthday card that I gave to Julie this year, so I had to wait for her to send me a picture of it. Who doesn't like an animal themed birthday card, right?

Rummage sale: There were two rummage sales that I wanted to go to today. One was at a church near my old high school and then the other was a used book sale at my old high school. At the rummage sale, there was a lady selling many of her Stampin' Up sets for $10 each. Some were still unmounted and unused! She also had some punches too. While I liked many of the sets, I decided to buy only two. I figured both of them could be used for masculine or feminine cards, depending on what colors you used. I bought a border punch as well, but when I tested it out on some scrap paper in my purse, the punch got stuck! The lady was nice enough to give me my money back. I was a little surprised that she wouldn't give me a deal on the 2 sets that I bought, but I did a little research when I got home to see how much these sets would be from StampinUp.com. Oh, wow, they are expensive! Whew, I got a deal!

The used book sale didn't go so well because when I got to the door, I saw the sign about a $5 entrance fee. Eeeh. Nah, I'll pass.

Running: Julie IMed me earlier today to report that she officially joined the CrossFit gym that we went to last week. I was inspired to go for a run after all that talk about working out. The St. Patrick's Day 8K is next week, eek!

Book: I was able to snag The Help from the library this afternoon. Yay, now I can pick up where I ended.

Friday, March 2, 2012

I decided to try two Indian food recipes today. I'm getting closer and closer to my goal of 25 new recipes by the end of 2012. I still haven't tackled seafood yet. That's still too intimidating for me.

The two recipes I tried were Budget Bytes's dal nirvana (right) and quick curried chick peas (left) (something like chana masala). I went to the grocery store this morning and found that many of the ingredients were on sale. A bag of lentils was $1.50. A can of tomato sauce was $0.33. A can of chick peas was less than $1. I was happy that I could use the rest of the cream that I bought for chocolate ganache a few weeks ago for the dal nirvana. I didn't want it to go to waste.

I've been on an Indian food kick lately, so these two recipes will really help me save some money. Between the two, I'd probably make the dal nirvana more frequently than the chick pea dish. On the nutrition side, the protein helps you feel fuller longer, so yay!